telekinetic

My top 3 Sci Fi movies are now:

Fifth Element
The Matrix
District 9

In an order yet to be determined. What a wonderful film. I loved the plot, I loved the cinematography, I loved the documentary style, I loved that the effects are finally COMPLETELY INVISIBLE (at no point in the movie do you go 'wow that was a great computer effect', you just go "holy shit that prawn just blew that guy up! gross!"), I loved the social commentary, I loved the setting, and I loved the lead actor.

I feel like any more would be spoilers...stay away from Ebert's review, it gives away everything--not that it is a movie which depends on its secrets to be good, but the intelligent way in which the film's carefully measured pacing slowly reveals the full story should not be shortcircuited if at all possible.


GO SEE IT NOW! RIGHT NOW!

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Baraka_Guru

When I first saw the trailer, I was skeptical. But then I saw a review headline that read, "Why District 9 will blow your mind," and now I"m interested.

It's been a long time since I've seen a decent sci-fi. Maybe I'll be seeing this soon.

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Halx

I was equally as impressed. This movie blew me away. I walked home from the theater just going "Wow... wow." under my breath.

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guy44

I dunno...it was good. Nothing more. I don't want to give anything away, 'cause it is way more effective if you don't know much about it, but it was nowhere near as good as The Matrix, not as fun as Serenity, not as intellectually stimulating as Moon, etc. Children of Men and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two of the greatest sci fi movies of all time, infinitely better than District 9, and both came out this decade. D9 is a good movie, a very enjoyable movie, in many ways quite clever, but hardly one that blew me away and certainly not the best this decade.

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Manic_Skafe

Exactly. I went to a midnight showing and left thoroughly underwhelmed. A decent movie at times but District 9 really isn't anything special. Certainly not worth raving over.

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Baraka_Guru

Truth be told, I'm still more interested in seeing Moon. The trailer itself wowed me.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Shauk

I thought it was a well told story. You may not be a fan of the subject matter but you cannot deny that this movie was masterfully delivered. The special effects weren't shoved down your throat at any point. Shit just happened, and it happened fast, no exagurated slo-mo action shootouts, just straight up real time "oh fuck that guy just got toasted" ala full metal jacket style.
the pig scene made me lol, a lot. Blink and you'd miss it too.

the thing is they left the ending perfectly, perfect for saying "watch for district 10 in 3 years"
it's so open ended though, you have no idea which way they'd take it for the sequel.

The core of the plot though should make every one of us human beings take a moment to reflect on our moral ambiguity when it comes to what we do "in the name of humanity" because we place ourselves higher on the totem pole than anyone else when it comes to advancing science, military technology, or exerting authority over ones rights.

Manic_Skafe

Brilliant film. Masterfully executed. So good I saw it twice.

-

District 9 is a glorified action film with delusions of grandeur. For all it's implications and historical references, so much more could've been done. Despite how well the graphics were integrated, the protagonist is barely likable and it all came together rather poorly.

Nothing special. Blah.

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mrklixx

Somebody in the "rate the movie" thread said that it looks like it was filmed with a handicam. Is the entire movie done in this fashion ala Cloverfield?

P.S. Manic_Skafe, that is a very confusing post.

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telekinetic

I'd say it's closer to steadicam than handicam. The quality is not all artificially degraded to look like vhs or anything, but all shots are definitely handheld.

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Grancey

Nothing like Cloverfield, which left me dizzy for 90 minutes. The filming mode of D9 was not distracting.

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Willravel

Moon would have my "best scifi of the decade" vote, but District 9 and Children of Men wouldn't be far behind. It's nice to see character driven science fiction make a comeback over loud explosions/naked women-centric science fiction. Not that I'm against explosions or naked women, they just generally lack substance.

Shauk

what are you talking about? if megan fox had been naked thru-out Transformers 2, it would automatically make movie of the decade.

Willravel

Yeah, the toe-thumb thing ruined her for me.

G5_Todd

good to hear i wanted to see this movie but i heard it was bad from the guys on the morning radio show i watch....

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PonyPotato

ROFL.

One of my friends really wants to bang Megan Fox, so I tease him about the toe thumb constantly. Apparently it's not a turn-off for him.

Also, so I don't get reprimanded for being off-topic.. I haven't seen District 9 yet. I have plans on Friday to go see it with the same friend mentioned above. I also really want to see Inglourious Basterds.

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Reese

I do believe I need to watch this movie again. There's something I'm missing because I really didn't enjoy this movie as much as you guys. I was almost ready to get up and walk out until the film changed pace and got away from the horrible documentary style and Wickus stopped acting like Murray from FOTC.

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SecretMethod70

I really enjoyed District 9. A lot. But I definitely enjoyed Moon more. Neither quite lived up to their potential, but I do consider both to be among the best sci-fi films in recent history. Not that that says much with the crap they've been putting out lately.

---------- Post added at 08:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 PM ----------

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who immediately thought about how awesome a District 9 video game could be: 7 Reasons Why a District 9 Video Game Would Be Awesome - Film School Rejects

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mrklixx

Saw it toda, and it was good. Not life changing by any means but good. And as stated above, the SFX are seamless. It kind of reminded me of Alien Nation on steroids.

There are, however, a few pretty big plot issues that I don't understand.
Spoiler: Why was the mother ship here? The Prawns have weapons that are obviously far superior to ours, so why are they letting us make them do anything? If the mother ship could be remote piloted and has a tractor beam, why did CJ Prawn spend 20 years scavenging to make fuel to fly the little ship?

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Willravel

Spoiler: The fuel wasn't just for the smaller craft, it was for the larger ship.

guy44

There are a couple of interesting things I think should be mentioned.

1) The movie is apparently much more pointedly allegorical if you're South African. The main character's last name van der Merwe is a very common Afrikaner name in SA (I think) and also the name used in a type of joke (van der Merwe is so stupid...etc.). Also, District 6 was a real-life ghetto for blacks who were forced to move to a new ghetto so D6 could be demolished. And the clicks the aliens speak with are reminiscent of the clicks which make up the language used by a sizable black native group that were discriminated against. So all that, and probably more, went right over my head and if I were from SA I'm sure it'd be more powerful for me.

Spoiler: 2) In an interview at the AV club, the director explained a lot he didn't put into the movie. He said that he imagined the aliens had a hive-mind type collective and had lost their queen when they were stranded above earth, and it took 20 years for another leader to be...generated, or born, or something. So that's why they never took initiative and never used their weapons.

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new man

I haven't seen or heard of this Moon movie everyone keeps mentioning, but I found District 9 to be the best sci fi movie since The Matrix, but for completely different reasons. It felt more real and less fantastical then so much other stuff that comes out. You expect the cast of Star Trek or Neo to be heroic. This was the real feel. As far as the camerawork, the idea was that you were watching a documentary or news piece. It completely blew me away because it felt so much more authentic.

slimpi66y

You have spotted possibly the best part of the movie, wthe prawns with its superior weapons and numbers (1 million of them), why were they opressed? The same can be said for the black people for 300 years

They lacked leadership and organization, this was the message of the movie, you need at least one person/prawn to start the revolution

---------- Post added at 09:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:56 PM ----------


What do you mean they left it open ended?

Christopher already said he will come back with "HELP" to liberate his people, intergalatic war is the only sequel they will make

healer

You know what pisses me off? That this South African directed, South African 'themed' film is only going to be released in South Africa on the 28th of August.

Naaiers.

Not you guys, the people who make these decisions.

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Shauk

what people say and what people do are 2 different things.

it's open ended to the point of, maybe the guy will want to remain an alien, or maybe he will convince them that the human race is worth saving (typical horseshit, since i'm always rooting for the aliens to just nuke us all to hell, that would be a memorable movie, I hate endings that send everyone back out in to the open feeling fine and dandy about humanity)
maybe he just wont come back, or maybe some subplot will open up as to why that one ship shows up there but no more, maybe they're all fugitives.

*shrug*

ObieX

I dunno, i didn't realy like district 9. Strait off it was clear what type of movie it was going to be and it just sorta killed it for me. I don't like tons of moral messages shoved down my throat when i go to see a movie.. but maybe that's just me.

I didn't find the effects all that special either. The way the aliens moved seemed completely artificial and computer generated. Sure watching people get liquefied by a weapon was sorta neat.. and the way Spoiler: the African warlord leader was killed was somewhat humorous.. i guess but even that you can see coming a mile away and just wasn't all that interesting. The ship in the background floating didn't look all that well done to me either.

Sure, it was better than Transformers.. but that's not really saying much at all cuz both Transformers movies sucked a big hairy nut. It was no where near the goodness of Matrix.. or even the Matrix sequels.

I'd say go see G.I. Joe instead. MUCH better than i was expecting it to be, even with the layer of corny that came later in the movie. Spoiler: "Yo Joe!" =

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SecretMethod70

When did District 9 shove moral messages down the throat though? In fact, the most common complaint I've heard and read is that it dropped the ball on being meaningful and was, instead, just a creative action film. Aside for the first 45 minutes or so, which was necessary to create the world in which the action takes place, the rest just awesome action.

The special effects were amazing for $30 million. It's all about context.

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ObieX

The entire movie shoved messages down your throat. Mostly racism and moral values type crap. It wasn't just the first 45 minutes.It showed black people as savage animals and the multinational coalition or whatever they had (representing countries such as the united states and the UK) as heartless, cruel and uncaring toward those deemed to be "sub human".

And i realize that the movie wasn't a movie about special effects, but they were in pretty much every shot since most shots had an alien or some other kinda effect going on (weapons/ships etc). None of it seemed all that convincing to me. The amount of money it cost doesn't mean anything to me other than if more of it would have resulted in better special effects they should have spent it.

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SecretMethod70

Perhaps the successful marketing has made it easy to forget this was not a Hollywood film. It's kind of a miracle they even had $30 million to spend in the first place. Spending more was not an option, and what they did is pretty incredible for $30 million.

The whole multinational corporation thing was a bit cliche, I'll certainly give you that, but I think it's interesting that you felt the movie was racist. I hadn't really thought of that, but I can see the point: the white characters were generally stupid, manipulative, and/or evil, and the black characters were primitive gang members running a black market. I don't think that was intentional at all, so I'm not sure it qualifies as shoving a message down anyone's throat, but I can certainly see that criticism.

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samcol

I agree, and I think you can throw the racism out the window when you realize it's loosely based on a true story. Spoiler: There were real people living in those huts who were evicted and the movie does a good job at making that look real. Wikus was literally going door to door pretending he was evicting people and they kept what worked and through out what didn't. I think that's pretty awesome and added to the realism. It was all improve.

I guess what I'm saying is the perceived racism wasn't coming from the film as much as it was coming from the people who were living in South Africa.

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Vaultboy

Sci-Fi aside, this was quite easily the most brilliant "South African culture" movie I have ever seen. Better than the biopics about Mandela, Stander, etc. Better than Blood Diamond etc. Most of those moives were Hollywood productions that allowed some SA esoterism. This whole movie is a massive allegory (and for Saffers, a social commentary). I'm amazed that the producers allowed it. But clearly it worked, looking at reviews.

I could spend hours analysing bits of dialogue and inter-personal behaviour, commentary, and also respond to a lot of the things you guys said earlier in the thread though, but I don't figure that it would be that important/interesting to you.


But in general, Obiex is right: The movie talks alot on the race-related issues in SA for the last 50 years, in various forms. Saying is "racism" is not nuanced enough, since it is a lot more complex, but I applaud you for "feeling" the subtext.

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SecretMethod70

I'd actually be really interested to hear more about what you saw in the movie, if you don't mind typing it!

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Vaultboy

Since you asked so nicely.

Warning people: DONT READ THIS POST IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS!!! Its so long, I dont want to add spoiler tags to the whole post.




The title:

District 9 is a play on District 6, which contrary to guy44's interpretation higher up in this thread was not "a real-life ghetto for blacks who were forced to move to a new ghetto so D6 could be demolished." District 6 was a vibrant working-class cosmopolitan area, close to the centre of Cape Town.

The title, however, is more a reference to the history of formalised segregation of South Africa, and merely uses District 6, given its "flagship" nature. The Apartheid government of SA advocated that interracial interaction bred conflict*, and "in the interest of peace", they introduced the Group Areas Act in 1967. The real reason behind this, obviously, was to remove coloured black and indian people from high value land, and relocate them to "Safe distances where they could be out of sight"*. They used propoganda and false legal means to remove the people*. (My grandparents lost their land this way, and were resettled to a dust-bowl 10km away). In District 6, however, the government were met with more vehement opposition than usual, given the cosmopolitan nature. From wikipedia: "They deemed District Six a slum, fit only for clearance, not rehabilitation. They also portrayed the area as crime-ridden and dangerous; they claimed that the district was a vice den, full of immoral activities like gambling, drinking, and prostitution."* THere's still a lot of pain and resentment in people who were disfranchised this way all over the country. A lot of land claims are still outstanding. District 6 is still undeveloped, despite being in the centre of Cape Town (and therefore having astronomical land value).

The descriptions of Prawns as sub-human and "liking to live that way":

Replace "Prawns" with "kaffirs" (the SA equivalent to "niggers"), and you'll get a true reflection of the perceptions some whites, coloureds and indians have towards their countrymen. Blacks (in general) are the poorest of the poor by social engineering. Most of which are illiterate or barely literate because government policy held that "black don't need to read". Decades of labour exploitation have led to most of whom lives below the breadline in squattercamps, like District 9. Most of whom are on low-quality meat diets, same as what the prawns eat - sheeps head, called a "smiley", is a local "delicacy".

THe interracial sex topic also relates to this. In SA an interracial couple is still an anomaly, and in some communities still a taboo.


The criminal behaviour of prawns:

Many people in SA (primarily whites and large amounts of coloureds) believe that blacks are lazy, and little better than animals (although they won't say so publicly), who cannot function in a normal society. The criminal behaviour of prawns is also a reflection of the arbitrariness of violent crime in SA, most of which are committed by blacks: reading a newspaper story of someone dying over a cellphone is not uncommon. There are ~ 18 000 murders in SA every year (population 43 million), and street/public robbery accounts for 66% of all crime. It is a reflex (for all of us) to question every crime in terms of the race of the perpetrator.

THe other side: prawns as intelligent people with feelings, :

Directly aimed at South Africans who believe the abovementioned things about blacks.


The Documentary style:

The style of the movie is typical to that of the SABC, South Africa's public broadcaster, specifically the programme "Special Assignment". Difficult to be specific, but a BBC based docu-drama would have looked different. Blomkamp ( i believe) shot the movie like this because he wanted a "Special Assignment" feel.


THe xenophobic interviewees:

This gave me goosbumps, when I saw the teaser trailer in May. Last year, we experienced violent and disturbing xenophobia against somalians and other north african refugees in South Africa. Before seeign the alien ship in the teaser, I though I was watching a docu-drama on last year's xenophobia. The teaser was brilliant, if you were South African. It undoubtedly would have drawn an emotional response.


The protagonist:

In SA, you get two types of whites: Afrikaners (primarily of Dutch descent) and those of British descent. As someone else mentioned, the character "Van der Merwe" (no first name) is the stereotypical Afrikaner idiot in SA jokes. The thing about the protagosnit, Wikus, was that he also embodies the "eager, Afrikaner well-meaning beaurocrat" to perfection. I myself am a beaurocrat, and I could see so many colleagues in him. Afrikaners are alto typically conservative about family and religion, and Wikus certainly was. He also embodies another Afrikaner trait: that he does not challenge authority. This is why most of the whites who challenged the apartheid government were English, and why it took him such a long time to stand up to Kobus.

The way Wikus spoke to blacks (his colleagues) and prawns are also spot-on to how many white afrikaners speak to their black colleagues and to blacks in unfriendly circumstances.


The antagonist:

Kobus is the other type of Afrikaner I see very often: The racist. Sure you get these okes in every western country, but its not the Kobus I know so well.


The nigerians:

What more can I say? Perfect stereotype. Google "419 scam", to geet a taste of Nigerian organised crime.


Johannesburg:

The gold-mining and economic capitol of our country. A dog-eat-dog place to live, which has bleak, cold (but sunny) winters. The perfect setting for this kind of movie.


There are other things that I cna't recall now - i might post it later, but suffice it to say that issues around race is woven so thickly into the fabric of South Africa, that this movie has a perfect home. Belgium is noted as the most most xenophobic country in the world, but the issues of District 9 are the issues of South Africa - past, present, and possibly future.

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klonnie bomber

the trailer was good, but the movie wasnt too great. its watchable though.

---------- Post added at 12:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 PM ----------

but i will have to hand it to the creator of district 9 (blomenkampf or some strange dutch name) he made a film that truly delved into true social commentary. my folks lived in africa for 4 years during apartheid and they were disgusted when they saw it (even though they loved it as well).
sharito copley should get more parts. does anyone know any other movies hes in?

Zeraph

D9 is definitely in my top 3. Hard to say if it beats matrix. Matrix was earlier in the tech, and they did amazing things with it. The philosophy was interesting too. Though I understand most people didn't get it. My main problem with the matrix was that humans were used as batteries which would be completely inefficient. Almost enough to make it fantasy instead of scifi. But if the machines had some code in their that made them less likely to destroy their makers it'd make perfect sense. So I just pretend that its so in the movies and they never mentioned it

Otherwise, Avatar would be way up there too. Again many people liked the visual effects but were confused by the "military" tactics (they were mercs not military, and they were under the rule of a corporation). That plus the fact that space travel is expensive the more mass you move makes it make sense. So in my opinion it was scifi not fantasy.

I thought 5th element was late 90s...hmmm. Tough call for top 3. It was good but closer to fantasy than scifi so I'd have to boot it if I'm limited to top 3. Matrix, District 9, Avatar.

Edit: not that'd it'd be in my top three, but its often over looked. Pandorum is a great scifi.

Vaultboy

I watched D9 on HD and nearly crapped myself. You can see just how much better and integrated the SFX are than in other movies.

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KirStang

My top 3:

Gattaca (The film has so many levels of analysis, so many themes--it really is quite good.)
The Matrix (ever felt like life was just a dream?)
Fifth Element.

Yea yea, so my 2 and 3 were boring, but I really think Gattaca should be mentioned.

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